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Robotic Science Network Watches Our Oceans
Roland Piquepaille writes "I bet most of you have never heard about Argo, an ambitious scientific project about the observation of our oceans. This project is endorsed by 18 countries and just reached a milestone: there are today more than 1,500 robotic floats reporting about salinity changes or predicting El Niño events, among other ones. This news release from the University of California at San Diego says that the Argo floats, which are autonomous ocean-traveling robots programmed to sink more than a mile below the ocean surface, are helping scientists all over the world to look at the future of our whole planet. And in 2007, when the deployment is completed, 3,000 underwater robots will help us to better understand the changes in our climate. You'll find more details, pictures and references in this overview."
Great, you're going to Slashdot UCSD. I hate you all.
Awesome, and here I thought they made up the observation bouy network just for the movie! Who'da thunk it.
I can hear the screams now! Wait, no you cant.
There is no sig
Screw the oceans, make them WiMax repeaters and build a global wireless network.
Glog!
Awesome, looking forward to "Ghost In the Sea Shell"
Electrons are free; it is moving them that becomes expensive.
This seems like an awfully small number since 2/3 of the earth's surface is covered in water. I mean these robots will give us a start, but for more reliable data this number seems to need to be drastically increased. I wonder what their plans are for expansion. Or do they have some technique that can help extrapolate between the gaps. The ocean seems too complex and too unknown to cover with so few robots.
Philosophy.
Now if only we had as many Standards Based land based weather observatories/robots, this would make NOAA much more precise (it is already very acurate with its predictions, just a higher level of precision would be nice, rather than each 'site' covering a 50 mile radius (or more).
Video Production Support
I bet most of you have never heard about Argo,
I think it just might be you that did not wach "The day after tomorrow" with its weather and saline bouys.
There they had a large network of nodes that measured wind speed and temperature in the ocean.
This is that bastard organisation that predicted that global warming would actually make the UK colder..
if an early reader wouldnt mind mirroring the animation on the site , it does describe the project effectively , and shows how a network of 3000 buoys can cover the globe evenly. if at the expense of 26megs avi ...
awesome, another way to pollute the earth.
irc.enterthegame.com #linux
- First, they save themselves a shipload of money in preventing the problems.
- Second, they are the guys that will clean up the mess afterwards, for proper rewarding of course.
- They will even be called heroes and nobody will ever disagree with their methods.
BTW the same filosophy applies to another ``global problem'': terrorism.We have to find a way of unmasking these criminals. They do have a name, the ``neo-conservatives.''
Don't we already know the future. with our present rate of pollution, there will soon be massive global warming, everything will become unsuitable for human consumption and so on and so forth. i guess looking for a method to save the planet is more important now...
"Argo floats, which are [...] programmed to sink"
Oh, yeah, that makes sense.
Isn't it possible that the mere presence of the robots may taint the results?
Hmmm, Roland Piquepaille submits an article, his homepage is http://www.primidi.com/
Coincidence, I think not, conspiracy, yes please.
See also Argo.net.
Fools, now skynet will be able to control the oceans as well...
I hope they have some kind of weapon to kill the sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads...
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I may regret this later, but...
Argo Robotic Instrument Network Now Covers Most of the Globe (2.6MB, QuickTime) (my mirror)
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
I, for one, welcome our new robotic float overlords!
Who else thought that they had ended up at groklaw when they looked at the pictures ?
This is rather interesting in the essance that the data collected could be analyzed using a distributed computing project where you could help predicting where the next storm could show up in 6 years. I would contribute my processor capabilities. It could also ease the load on those robots.
It has to be said. For reasons I cannot understand, the editors continue to allow roland to post links to his half assed summary of another story in order to generate traffic for his blog. It's horrible to think that we're all providing revenue for this person. Visit google's cache of his page here and don't click on any of the ads. Perhaps in the future, the editors should give a little thought before helping this guy out again.
Are these the robots with shotguns, robots who talk to Japanese illegal immigrants, or the old Korean robots that spam people? ...sorry.
I also do not understand the apparant zeal with which his articles are selected and published. One or two now and then, I could understand... but you can almost tell when Roland has a car payment due, the flurry of stories that arise...
Another project I work on makes /.; go figure. Here are some better links.
The US Global Data Center for the Argo project.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst. Argo page. This includes links to data profiles and other info.
WHOI's realtime data grapher allows you to see where the floats are, where they have been, find a float in any region WHOI monitors, etc.
Also check out the Argo Information Center and their Global Float Map. (The WHOI one tends to be faster if you are only interested in the Atlantic)
Sorry, the fact of the matter is that the earth cannot be damaged, only changed. Human activities change the climate, but so does climate itself. Besides, the earth is just a stupid rock and nature is just a chemical reaction. If we are "nice" to the earth, the earth is not going to care. It's not some sentient being that has its feelings hurt if we whack a species or if we genetically engineer knew ones that are more entertaining.
The alternatives you guys have is to take us back to the good old days when we were all living in animal skin covered tents freezing to death and getting eaten by sabre tooth tigers and giant wolves. F-- that. I want my car with a giant engine!
Still, I do want to help you. I'll drop you off some mold or natural animal piss you can process for your little left wing envirohovels before I head off the mall in search of more loot. Maybe I need to buy a bigger truck to haul bigger stuff, and get a bigger job so I can get a bigger truck.
Go Bush!
This is my sig.
This gives me hope that there may soon be a version of the Roomba that floats in the toilet and constantly keeps it clean.
Now we can finally get Center Neptune under construction.
All right, you try to come up with something more obscure and geekier.
In deep sea research vessel, Robotic Science Network watches YOU!
Same can be said for probes in more interesting places.
Though at least the rest of your post wasn't about what I thought it was going to be about!
There is also another useful network of fixed bouys run by the NOAA at the National Data Bouy Center. They have bouys fixed at certain locations off the coasts and they record wind velocity and direction, swell height and period, air temperature and pressure and water temp. Things like wind direction and velocity can be very useful for people on boats out in the oceans, and the history on the site let you understand prevailing conditions of a given area. So if you friend says the waves were 5 feet overhead, or we had 15 foot swells out on the boat last weekend, you can actually check. You can even call a number on our cell phone and read data the bouys have collected.
Imagine how many jobs this could have provided for people! WHY GOD WHY!?
You're nothing; like me.
Anyone port Linux to these things yet?
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere